Planned Parenthood's cash cow

When revenue from harvested baby organs is considered, late term abortion is one of Planned Parenthood’s highest ticket items. This very well may explain why the abortion giant has resisted any attempt by legislators to restrict these horrific procedures.

This topic requires a discussion of abortion methods for which I apologize in advance, because the details are disgusting and barbaric.

Abortion methods differ based on the age of the child. The most common method used during the first trimester is suction curettage, which employs the use of a high power vacuum that tears the child into small pieces.

After the first trimester, dilation and evacuation is the predominant method. This involves the use of forceps to more slowly twist, tear and dismember the child—at a more advanced stage of development. Ninety-six percent of all second trimester abortions are done this way. And as we have recently learned from the undercover videos, this is the “less crunchy” method that works best for organ harvesting.

Until now, Planned Parenthood’s insistence on committing these late term dismemberments has been a bit of a mystery. If, as Planned Parenthood claims, abortions are only 3% of its services and, as the CDC claims, post-15 and post-20 week abortions are only 5.2% and 1.4% of all abortions, then these abortions are only 0.15% and 0.04% of Planned Parenthood’s services, respectively. The awful procedure and the negative press associated with it never seemed worth it, assuming all abortions fetch the same price.

Now things are clearer. With the organ business properly factored, we see that late term abortions are two to three times more lucrative than first trimester procedures.

Here’s the math: From a young pregnant woman, living near the poverty line, Hudson Peconic Planned Parenthood in New Rochelle collects $525 for an early trimester abortion but asks $900, $375 more, for a late term abortion done with forceps. (Until July 29th, the public could link here to the Hudson Peconic Planned Parenthood online cost estimator—curiously, after being available for years, it has been taken down.)

The bigger ticket late term abortion premium of $375 represents a 70% increase in Planned Parenthood revenue as compared to the first trimester abortion. Even before factoring in the organ harvesting, late term abortions deliver significantly more revenue.

They also deliver bigger, more marketable baby parts. From the videos we know that a practiced abortionist can skillfully dismember an older child; preserve the heart, liver, lungs or head; and sell the high quality organs for $100 apiece. Counted four times (for the heart, liver, lungs and head), good big developed baby parts add $400 to the $900 ticket, bringing the all-in late term abortion revenue to $1,300, or 2.7x the sales price of the $525 first trimester abortion.

Despite its high price, the late term abortion remains a low cost and low tech hacking. Its marginal costs are few and include seaweed based laminaria ($3.25 each) or misoprostol ($0.50-$0.75/pill) for cervical dilation, an antibiotic, antiseptic, pain medicine and a sedative, electricity to run the ultrasound (for accuracy to maximize the saleable organ yield), a garbage bag and a few disposable towels. The $900 base rate easily covers these variable costs many times over (the abortionist is a fixed overhead cost that Planned Parenthood seeks to spread over as many abortion sales as possible).

The extra $400 of organ harvesting revenue drops straight to the bottom line. The concept, defensively floated by Planned Parenthood, that the organ revenues are “reimbursement for handling expenses” is laughable—someone gives you $400 and a piece of meat to keep in the fridge for a few days, you make $400 before and after “handling expenses.” Refrigerator time is rounding error and, even if you are responsible for returning the meat, whether in Colorado or Texas, FedEx charges no more than $50 for an overnight delivery of a 5 lb. package insured at $400.

The organ revenue is found money. Without the after-market for body parts, the whole aborted baby would be thrown in the trash.

Follow the money. Assuming the CDC is correct and just 5.2% of Planned Parenthood’s 327,653 annual abortions are post-15 week procedures, that’s 17,000 annual revenue events at $1,300 each for a total of $22 million a year on late term dismember and harvest procedures. Planned Parenthood has to do many more first trimester procedures, over 42,000, to achieve the same $22 million.

Said differently, President Cecile Richards needs only 385 dismember and harvests to pay her $500,000+ salary, but about a thousand early trimester abortions to do the same—a very efficient way to cover corporate overhead. Richards is incentivized to fill her clinics with as many high ticket late term abortions as possible and, as the videos demonstrate, is vigorously pursuing the business line and all of the cross selling opportunities it presents (including seeking advice from in-house legal counsel as to how to skirt organ trafficking laws). The more really big belly mothers, the better for Planned Parenthood and its senior management.

Obviously, “safe, legal and rare” isn’t a very profitable business model (especially the rare part), but “late, legal and common” is. Planned Parenthood is a business and will promote and sell its highest revenue products. Planned Parenthood will pre-negotiate the price of organs still in live children, charge mothers to kill their children and sell the parts for as long and as much as possible—until stopped.

We are often too willing to be distracted by happy sounding “women’s health” platitudes. The real value of these undercover videos is as a reminder about the truth of late term abortion.

Of course, in a two-bit misdirection, some have tried to defame the videographer so as to exculpate Planned Parenthood. But blaming the witness only speaks loudly about the character, guilt and fear of those who would continue to promote late term abortion while refusing to acknowledge its details and nature.

These videos force us to ask and answer, “Who are we?” And God help us if we are a people who get self-righteous about the coal industry because of its environmental impact or Wall Street because of income inequality, but don’t object to this. By any standard, this is incomparably worse—one child, slowly torn and sold, is a far bigger deal than tons of CO2 and seven figure bonuses. God help us if we don’t remove the profit motives for abortion and enact laws against both late term abortion and the barter for and sale of children’s organs.